Sugarbread

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  I waited for her to leave the kitchen before I threw the roti down the garbage chute. Wasting food was a sin, but what good was it if I already knew what it would taste like? It would be sour like resentment, sour like lies and it would churn in my stomach, a heavy burden. I was loyal to Ma because of how she ducked at the market to check my skin, how she leant dangerously out of the window to hang my clothes. She stayed at home and waited for me. She let me play with the boys in the neighbourhood. A clear, weightless laugh from Ma was rare but it was unlike anything I had ever heard. She was more beautiful than other mothers—all of my classmates told me so when she came to school last year on Report Card Day. Later that evening, as I struggled to eat her tasteless soup, I thought about how happy she would be to see me forgive the lack of salt and sweet prunes. How proud she would be of my loyalty.

  • • •

  It was the first of September and the first of the month meant that the school bus fee had to be paid. Daddy placed two ten-dollar notes, two fives and three dollar coins all in the envelope. “Be careful not to let any of it spill, Pin,” he whispered. Nani-ji opened her eyes and shot us a look. She required absolute silence from all of us while she did her early morning prayers.

  “How did she hear you?” I asked Daddy. He smothered his laugh with his big shovel-like hands. “Go on,” he said. “You’ll be late.”

  “I haven’t eaten breakfast yet,” I told him. Ma was in the kitchen, sleepily boiling an egg. She used a spoon to scoop it out of the pot and peeled away the shell gingerly over the dustbin. Then she split the egg in the middle and poured a few drops of sweet soy sauce into the yolk. She came out into the hall to give it to me. Nani-ji’s chants filled the flat, and she swayed slightly. God looked pleased.

  “How come we’ve never done morning prayers?” I whispered to Ma.

  “We’re not old ladies,” Daddy said. Now it was my turn to stifle laughter. Ma gave Daddy’s shoulder a gentle shove. “Go to work. You, go to school,” she ordered. Nani-ji looked up again. I finished my boiled egg, put the bowl in the kitchen sink and straightened my uniform. Nani-ji stood up to finish her prayers. This time, the chanting became a tune, rising and falling. God’s head bobbed, slightly enchanted by Nani-ji’s praising music.

  Outside, a strong breeze stripped the trees of their leaves and made them circle the ground. It looked like it might rain. Monsoon season had arrived earlier that year and dense clouds often made the sky seem lower. I waited for the school bus under the shade of a skinny tree. On the pavement ahead, a Chinese family huddled together over a patch of grass. It was the beginning of the Hungry Ghost Festival and they were offering meals to the spirits of their ancestors. The father laid out two oranges and a plate of rice. The mother added a plate of cookies. Together, they lit red joss sticks and clasped them in their hands. Smoke trailed from the glowing tips of the incense as they waved and muttered their offerings. Then they stood up and lit a fire in a large red oil barrel as tall as I was. The father struck a match and lit it from a hole in the bottom. I stepped back as the flames leaped and seemed to lick the sky. They threw sheets of paper money into the flames. The money quickly blackened. Pieces of ash drifted across the pavement, crumbling as the wind hit them. I started to cough, and was relieved when the bus arrived.

  I handed the envelope to Bus Uncle, who counted the bills carefully. Then he spilt the coins into his palm and sorted through them. A grin spread across his face. He shoved the envelope back at me. “No enough,” he said.

  “There’s enough!” I insisted, pushing the envelope back to him.

  “This one only thirty-three dollar. School bus fees thirty-five,” he said, emphasising his point by holding up three, then five fingers.

  I looked at the girl sitting closest to the front. She said, “Yeah, it was in the school newsletter.” I vaguely recalled Daddy complaining about the bus fees becoming more expensive but he must have forgotten.

  I reached into my pocket. I had enough in my coin purse to give Bus Uncle the rest of the fees but then I wouldn’t have enough left to buy something from the canteen for lunch. I couldn’t trust Ma’s food any more. Yesterday, she had left the wrinkled shells of seeds inside her coconut gravy.

  Bus Uncle laughed unkindly and a sneer formed on his wrinkled face. He leant so close to me, I could feel his hot breath on my face. “Mungalee,” he said loudly so everyone could hear. I shrank away from him and went to the back of the bus. My face was still hot but this time, it was from embarrassment. “Shut up,” I muttered under my breath.

  Elizabeth Rodrigues asked me what the word meant. “I don’t know,” I told as her as truthfully as I could. “He’s just talking nonsense.” But the girl who sat across from us, Dinavati, knew exactly what the word meant. She glared at Bus Uncle. “If he calls me any names, I’m telling my father,” she said.

  The elastic on my hair band was stretched and worn. We had PE for first period and by recess, my hair had come loose from my ponytail. Farizah and I went to the toilets so she could help me tie it up. “It’s almost long enough to plait,” she remarked. She turned on the tap and wet her hands before running her fingers across my scalp. The water trickled down my neck and darkened the edges of my blouse collar. I squirmed a bit.

  “Stay still,” Farizah commanded.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said and our giggles bounced off the walls. The second-floor toilets always smelled like urine and strong disinfectant. Both our noses were wrinkled in disgust. But my hair had to be fixed. Since Nani-ji forbade haircuts, Ma wouldn’t take me to the hairdresser. She kept trying to convince me it would look better long anyway. “Maybe the weight of being long will straighten it out,” Ma had said doubtfully.

  Farizah was taller than I was but I never noticed her height until she stood behind me. In the mirror, I could see her forehead clearly above mine. She seemed so much smaller because of her high socks and long pinafore. It billowed around her knees like a tent.

  “Isn’t it warm for you?” I asked her, pointing at her shins. School rules said we had to have white socks so most of us wore sports ankle socks. Farizah’s socks were thick and they looked woolen. A tiny sliver of her leg skin showed as she shifted the weight from one foot to the other.

  “I’m used to it,” she said. This was her response to every question about her religion. “Aren’t you hungry?” I had asked her pointedly at lunch the other day. She was really fasting now and wasn’t allowed to even swallow her own spit. I was the only person she tolerated questions from, and she never asked any in return because she seemed to know everything already. She knew about how Sikh men braided their hair and tucked it into their turbans. She knew about my kara.

  “There,” she said. “Happy?” We both looked in the mirror. The ponytail was taut and my hair looked gelled back. I instantly looked neater than I had that morning, when Bus Uncle had called me that word. The only thing that worried me was the wetness of my hair. It looked like oil and Bus Uncle would double his insults if he suspected I had smoothed my hair with oil. The girls who made fun of Gayathiri said that she smelled like coconut oil.

  “It will dry,” Farizah said. “Do you like it?”

  I nodded. Outside, the bell clanged, signalling the end of recess. Farizah looked relieved because it meant she didn’t have to stay in the bathroom any more. She had a hard time being in the canteen during her fasting period because there was food everywhere.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Hold on,” I said. I took the bar of soap from the sink, ran it under water and scrubbed it on my left wrist. When there were enough suds, I tried to slip the kara off. It moved a bit further than it had without the soap, but it still couldn’t get past my wrist. I tried a few more times before washing the suds off my hands and walking out with Farizah, defeated.

  “I think you need a saw or something,” she told me, inspecting my wrist. “Is it real silver?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Farizah shrugged and looked at her o
wn wrists. They were slightly paler than mine, with dark hairs in rows following one direction. We queued up with our class and bowed our heads while the girls around us said an after-meal prayer. Most of them fidgeted but Farizah stood still. The only time I saw her move was after the prayer was finished. She reached down to adjust her socks. She pulled them so high her knees disappeared, turning her into a pillar.

  • • •

  The full-length mirror was built into my closet door, which was wide open. Nani-ji stood in front of it and twisted her thin white hair into a bun. Patches of her scalp showed at the top of her head, and she ran her small comb over the exposed parts of it. Long bands of cool light entered my room through the blinds. Our neighbours shuffled past in shadows and outlines. I wanted to watch them and play my guessing game, but Nani-ji insisted on going to the temple early.

  “What’s the point of going there after the service is over? A free meal?” she had asked, pointedly staring at Daddy. He had held up his arms like criminals in movies when they surrendered. She had been making comments about his not going to the temple lately. Ma explained that he often worked Sunday night shifts and had to sleep in the day, but Nani-ji clearly thought of this as an excuse. “What’s so difficult about his job that he has to sleep so much?” Nani-ji had retorted.

  Daddy was the only person in our flat who always looked God squarely in the eye. It was as though God was some stranger passing him on the street, powerless and equal. Nani-ji always looked at God’s feet when she prayed. Ma tried to avoid His gaze. I looked at Him in the eye sometimes but it was only because I saw Him moving so much and I wanted to see if there was anything else He wanted me to know. But Daddy was confident around God. He didn’t seem to think he had anything to be afraid of.

  I went to take a shower and when I got out, Nani-ji was still standing in front of my mirror. This time, she was inspecting her own face very closely, tracing the deep lines that ran from the corners of her eyes. She was breathing heavily, something I had noticed lately. At night, she mumbled nonsense in her sleep. During the day, she took in the air with large gulps, her chest heaving from the effort.

  “I have to change clothes,” I told her. I was wrapped in my towel and the water dripping from my ears formed a small puddle near the door. Nani-ji looked up from her reflection.

  “You shouldn’t be walking around the house half-naked like that. It’s indecent,” she said. She wandered out of the room. The fight between her and Ma had caused a silence that I hoped would last for a long time because the flat had become peaceful, although in a strange and uncomfortable way. But within a few days, Nani-ji was breathing down Ma’s neck again. Ma protected herself by coming out of her room, cooking quickly, then rushing back inside like a mouse hurrying back into its hole in the wall. She shut the door behind her so quickly that there was little time for Nani-ji to find something to say.

  Ma usually laid out an outfit for me to wear to the temple but this morning, she looked tired. “They’re all ironed—just pick what you feel like wearing.” It was a luxury to be able to choose. I could pick what I wanted to wear when we went anywhere else, but the rules changed for the temple. People stared, judged and calculated in the temple. But that Sunday, Ma was too busy making herself look presentable. I chose a light yellow salwaar-kameez with a deep orange lining and small diamond-shaped buttons. It was one of the few salwaars I had with an elastic band and not a drawstring that I had to tie into a knot. I walked into Ma’s room, hoping she wouldn’t notice I had worn it two weeks before.

  Daddy was snoring lightly, the sheets pulled up to his chin and his big toes poking out at the ends. Ma put her finger to her lips and said, “Shh,” as I pushed the door closed behind me.

  “He won’t wake up,” I told Ma. Years of working the night shift had made Daddy able to fall asleep at any time. His days and nights were reversed, as if he was living in another time zone.

  Ma was wiping dots of talcum powder off her blouse. Her outfit was a deep green embroidered with pink flowers. She dabbed on a bit of blush and some brown lipstick. The make-up gave her a stern Sunday appearance. When going to the market, she wore the same shades because they were good for negotiating. She often said that praying was like bargaining with God and always coming up short. She told me this now, her voice lowered so Nani-ji wouldn’t hear. Daddy stirred and Ma smiled.

  “Look at him,” she said tenderly. It made me smile. Ma and Daddy didn’t talk to each other as often as they talked through me, but what they loved about each other was always made clear in these exchanges. I was also relieved; lately, with Nani-ji around, Ma had been looking at Daddy with doubt. But his eyes were closed now, the dark lids a deep shade of purple. He was still and free from worry; he looked younger than he was.

  “I don’t know how he manages to look so calm all the time,” Ma said, reading my thoughts. “Your father is the happiest person I know. And all he wants is for everyone else to be happy.” For a brief moment, her lips twisted in a small display of envy. “You know what I mean?”

  I thought about Daddy’s drawings and how he always made me draw the world as something bigger than it was. He drew in small squares and lines, but I was always instructed to fill the entire page, corner to corner, so nothing was wasted. “Yeah, I know,” I said.

  I pushed myself up onto the dresser and sat with my legs dangling down. I asked Ma if this was why she married him, because he wanted the world to be happy. It seemed like a good reason to marry someone.

  “She married me because I looked like a movie star,” Daddy said with a grin. Ma and I both gasped and began to laugh. She took a pillow and tossed it at his head. The pillow missed him but bumped their wedding photograph. It rocked on the wall like a pendulum.

  “You were awake!” I exclaimed, jumping from the dresser to the bed. The mattress creaked and Daddy let out an exaggerated groan as I fell on him.

  “How can I sleep when you ladies are trying to get ready with your hair spray and your make-up cases and your clips?” he grumbled and closed his eyes again. You ladies. I beamed, thinking of myself as somebody dignified and grown-up.

  Ma turned around to inspect my outfit. “You look nice,” she said.

  She dabbed a bit more powder on a cluster of red scars on her throat. “You’re not wearing any jewellery?” I asked. Her disguises for her scars consisted of long-sleeved blouses, close-toed shoes, long pants with stiff cuffs and a gold necklace that concealed the spots that appeared on her neck.

  Ma shook her head. She had worn the necklace for her wedding. A pair of round matching gold earrings were also missing. “They’re with your Nani,” she said. “I let her keep my wedding jewellery when she moved in.”

  This didn’t make sense to me. “But it’s your jewellery,” I said.

  “They were given to me for my wedding. They were your grand-mother’s,” Ma said. “She’ll give it all back. It’s the only valuable thing she ever really owned and she likes keeping it with her. Remember how you liked to carry that smelly pillowcase everywhere when you were a toddler? It’s like that.”

  My mind went straight to my room. I tried to think of what I might have to hide in case Nani-ji decided to claim it as hers, but I didn’t own anything of great value besides my sticker collection and the small stack of bus tickets I had been saving all year. I decided she could have the dirty pillowcase.

  Ma shrugged in the mirror. Her eyes in the reflection met mine. “It’s not important, Pin. Gold is gold. And those designs are outdated so I won’t pass them on to you when you get married one day. I’d get it shaped into something more modern. People shouldn’t hold on to things like necklaces and old clothes. It’s unhealthy.” She brushed on a bit more powder and hurried out of the room.

  I poked Daddy’s arm. “Want to come to the temple?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Liar.”

  Daddy reached for the drawer next to him. Ther
e was a glint in his eyes. “Give me some numbers.”

  “I didn’t think of any,” I lied. I had thought of plenty that week, but I was afraid of what God might think.

  “Hurry,” Ma said and she came back into the room. “Your grand-mother is starting to grumble.”

  “Starting?” Daddy said. I laughed. Ma turned around and gave Daddy a look. He rolled onto his side and pretended to be asleep again. I passed Nani-ji in the hallway on the way back to my room. She was breathing very hard through her nose.

  “Are you sick?” I asked with hope. I wanted to spend my Sunday watching the boys play football, queuing up with Daddy at the 4D shop, sitting in the kitchen while watching Ma.

  Nani-ji shook her head. “Turn around,” she said.

  I did as she told and felt her bony fingers on my scalp. “Are you going to the temple like this?” she asked me. My ponytail hung loose and wisps of hair stuck to my neck.

  “I’m going to comb it, then tie it tighter,” I informed her. It was getting harder to get my ponytail to stay in its place. I had to use a bit of baby oil to weigh down the curls that stuck out of my head like scribbles.

  Nani-ji shook her head again. She put both her hands on my shoulders and steered me towards my room. Her fingernails dug into my skin but when I tried to shrug her off, she clung on. As I closed my door behind me, I heard Nani-ji calling for Ma in her raspy voice. I got dressed with an uneasy feeling, straining to hear the conversation between the two of them after Ma came out into the hallway.

  “Okay, fine!” I heard Ma say. I opened the door to see her standing in the hallway with her hands thrown up in the air, surrendering. Nani-ji gave a satisfied nod and said, “Be quick. I don’t want to be late again.”

  “What’s going on?” I followed Ma into her room. Wordlessly, she grabbed a brush, a fine comb, a bottle of baby oil, and a handful of clips and rubber bands. “Outside,” she told me, pointing with her chin towards the living room. “Your grandmother says I have to plait your hair,” she said.